Weather in Georgia has been just unusual enough this weekend to be remarkable. Normally our spring rainfall develops in a fairly tight front that sweeps from the northwest to the southeast. On Friday, numerous spots of heavy rainfall developed 300 miles to our southeast and then these spots propagated northwestward during the course of the day, and persisted throughout Saturday. Not the usual pattern, at all.

We ended up with 0.14 inches over Friday and Saturday, but locations even just five or ten miles away got up to an inch of rain total.

And tonight and Monday night the temperatures are to be down in the mid-forties, approaching recorded lows of 39-43 degF.

It’s not that we haven’t had dragonflies, but none has been new. I think I’ve made the reacquaintance of all the species I’ve encountered before. But you could be watching out for these two:

Still, there’s nothing wrong with saying hello to this one, a gray petaltail (Tachopteryx thoreyi), I think. I saw my first one last June 1. It’s a lovely, huge dragonfly. They are actually known for their habit of perching on the trunks of trees, or the observer, for that matter. I followed this one from tree to tree in an environment similar to the third photo down in Friday’s post. Several times it buzzed me deliberately.

And here we have the spectacular widow skimmer (Libellula luctulosa), seen last year June 18. They’re haunting the same area too, the top of the first deck, a large open and sunny place.

I noticed that these fly in a fluttering manner, rather than the zipping about of most dragonflies.



Finally, an unknown narrow-winged damselfly, one of the many bluets or forktails or dancers or sprites. Identification will drive you crazy. This one was persistent in its patrol of the south house deck. Even Giff Beaton’s excellent website didn’t help me.



It doesn’t have the bold shoulder markings of most of this family of damsels. Maybe it’s a teneral.